Obama at his final WHC Dinner

Obama may not have been a great President, but he does perform well at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. His jokes manage to be funny, but not nasty. A good mix of self-deprecating humour and humour at other politicians.

Trump can take a joke also. He actually took part in a Comedy Central Roast which is exceptionally brutal.

Ed Snack

Cheap and mean would be an accurate description, but, hey, that’s Obama in a nutshell. I guess it’s extra easy to get laughs when you’re preaching to the converted, that wasn’t really a WHCA, it was a chapter meet for the local Democrat news organizations.

kowtow

He does perform well.

Yep ,total disaster as a president , but as modern politics are all about perception and no substance that sums it upvery well.( Once you have the media on side, you’re a hero , no matter how shit you actually are)

ciaron

stephieboy

I think we have all the usual pat responses from those who have all the way through have had it in for Obama which truthfully has a lot to do with the colour of the POTUS and his families skin .

I’m amazed the way the President has been able to deflect and disarm the many kinds of scurrilous assertions that has featured during his tensor , from the ludicrous claims of that Arizona sheriff , the deranged President ( the one who has sex with dogs etc ) to the ludicrous and sinister anti Christ.of conspiracy nutters like Alex Jones and with the Tea Party nutters hovering approvingly in the background.

In terms of that alone his will be regarded as a great Presidency and who for once did not drag the US into another foreign invasion and occupation remote from centres of power . An invasion and occupation that Trump and Cruz and the GOP want to fully restore .

Longknives

David Garrett

Ed Snack: I don’t think so…Have a look at the audience reaction when he bags Trump…very little applause and almost no-one smiling…If they were all democrat hacks you could expect the BEST reaction to that bit..

But then of course, you might have an in depth knowledge of who is who in the Washington press corps…I don’t.

I could only get as far as 5.08 into the clip. Obama has to be the most over rated, under achieving POTUS in living memory. The media long ago gave up any pretence of objectivity when it comes to Obama, it has been nothing more than a ten year campaign of organised sycophancy.

Obama promised hope and change, the USA and the world got none of either.

mikenmild

ciaron
You wouldn’t dare joke about the Oscar-winner for Best Picture, would you?
Mind you, you wouldn’t have to be too hot shot as a reporter to find out that the Catholic Church fostered and protected pedophiles…

Manolo

deadrightkev

DPF

Obama will go down as possibly the worst president in American history. The fact that Key seems to hold him in such high regard and supports his destruction of a once great nation should be a serious concern to all New Zealanders. I find nothing funny about him or his administration.

Trump has been in many comedy sketches and movies as well. Of course he has a huge ego and likes his success but he also has a strong sense on humor. Blue collar workers and taxi drivers are particularly fond of him.

Flyingkiwi9

stephieboy

Manolo and deadrightkeve etc , on the contrary the POTUS will I predict be judged kindly, minus your obsessional based birther raves and rants .Spoon fed by a daily diet of the irrepressible right wing nut FOX , WND , Tea Party etc , etc

tom hunter

stephieboy (11,203 comments) says:
May 2nd, 2016 at 10:50 am
…
In terms of that alone his will be regarded as a great Presidency …

Compare and contrast ..

deadrightkev (1,895 comments) says:
March 21st, 2016 at 9:15 pm
…
Trump and his team will be going up a gear or two from here. He has all the guile of a street fighter and the brains of a super intellect at 156IQ.

Look at the United States both before and after his ‘reign’, and ask, is it better than it was before him? The answer has to be no.
ObamaCare has been a disaster. His ‘triumph’ is South Sudan has backfired. He has almost insured that Iran gets nuclear weapons. He helped depose Egypt’s leader, and supported the Muslim Brotherhood replacement (who was later ousted, and the MB banned in Egypt). He re-lost the war in Iraq that had already been won, by withdrawing troops, leading to the rise of ISIS. His and Hillary’s ineptitude led to Benghazi, which they tried to cover up by blaming a youtube video.

Race relations at home are much worse than under Bush, and he has helped foment that. We never had groups like Black Lives Matter before Obama. They weren’t needed. Not to mention the scandals of the VA vets, NSA spying, IRS targetting, fast and furious gunrunning, etc etc.

Sir Cullen's Sidekick

stephieboy

tom hunter, and it was claimed that GWB had an IQ of 132 Your point ?

Presidents are not routinely administered IQ tests and plenty of Presidents it is claimed lower than Obama !

However rI do have to wonder about the 156 figure given the kind of crowd pleasing Charlatanry Trump regularly indulges like 45% Tariffs , that 1900 mile wall , cozying up to Putin,getting Apple to close down Chines operations recommencing manufacturing at home , etc, etc.

The kind of things that would make a libertarian type purist really squirm .

tom hunter

It actually was one of his better ones, in that he was not quite as nasty about his opponents as he has been in the past (the GOP compared to terrorists or being on the same side as Iranian hardliners – nice, and fuck you too).

But I laughed at quite a few points, especially the little cameo of Obama sitting at an empty Oval Office desk wondering what to do now: getting a new job (the Washington Wizards hang up, getting a drivers licence from the DMV – “NUMBER 44”!!!).

But at the same time I understand that this cosy little Washington world is so much of what people are voting against when they support Trump. I think that’s a mistake, but I get the anger.

In the cameo, Obama ends up watching Toy Story in a small theatre with …. John Boehner – who suggestively rattles a pack of cigarettes in Obama’s face. That’s the John Boehner whom the Democrats tried to turn into a boogeyman before the 2014 Mid-Term elections as the previous “Orangeman” and killer of single mothers and children, etc, etc.

So we’re supposed to laugh at the fact that he can roll with the punches – but the impression left is that it was all just a charade. That Boehner was actually perfectly comfortable with Obama, and vice versa (hence the Bernie voter anger). As this writer said of Obama’s recent speech in Britain in the Brexit debate:

The president’s choice of vocabulary — when is the last time you heard an American say “back of the queue”? — made Brits wonder whether he was reciting lines drawn up in Downing Street. In other words, they suspected that David Cameron was using foreign leaders to bully and threaten his own country.

In any case, “back of the queue” is not the sort of thing you say to a friend. Outside the Westminster bubble, the general reaction was: “We’re not at the back of the bloody queue when you need allies in your wars
…
Where the commentariat saw, or affected to see, two national leaders talking about serious matters, the general population saw a racket: The same racket that has led to the tax-free employees of various international bodies telling them how important the EU is. They saw two back-scratching politicians who, though they might represent different countries, form one caste.

That’s exactly right. Different parties and countries, and even ideologies – supposedly. But really a single caste, who we’re watching in this video, laughing and applauding and patting themselves on the back. And although I can still enjoy these things, it’s getting harder to do so every time.

Ed Snack

DG, a just completed poll of the White House press corps failed to locate a single Republican.

And somehow, Stephieboy finds the gall to accuse us all of racism for not worshipping Obama. Just shows what a hideous mistake and absolute failure the man is, that the only way they can defend him is to point to the colour of his skin and claim that the shade of it puts him beyond scrutiny. Sad, really.

stephieboy

Ed Snack, but it’s largely true considering also they way you use to peddle Birtherism and other ant Obama isms .I do happen to think many of the negative perceptions about Obama is based on the colour of his skin .Nothing in the posts here lead me to change my views on that score ,

Ed Snack

Long sigh, that’s a direct fabrication Stephieboy, in fact an outright lie. Your striking so far at 0.00, want another go ?

I’m not sure I’ve ever peddled ant Obama isms, I’m not a myrmecophile in general. One doesn’t need to use the colour of his skin to explain the fact that he has been an arrant failure, an unintelligent egotistical narcissist with high level political skills. And the skill to present himself as the blank canvas that all the sad little failures like yourself can project whatever heroic images you want to fantasize about. Real life, sadly for you, will judge him harshly, and all the accusations of racism in the world won’t change that.

Obama may not have been a great President, but he does perform well at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. His jokes manage to be funny, but not nasty. A good mix of self-deprecating humour and humour at other politicians.

Maybe to you starched political pundits David, but really Obama’s comedic timing sucks. Not sure that his oratory is all that good either. But unlike many I think he’s been an important and successful president.

tom hunter

While lavishly paid, “brilliantly perceptive” reporters and editors like David Remnick and James Fallows were saying that Trump had “zero chance” of winning the nomination, anybody who bothered to speak to ordinary folks walking the streets below the suites of The New Yorker could see that Trump had a huge opening. The George Wills, who spend more time tinkering with their cuff links than talking to people, also pronounced Trump an unelectable clown who would soon disappear back into the buffoonery from which he came.

Such inept punditry and incompetent reporting is the journalistic equivalent of a surgeon killing a patient on the operating table. Yet all these reporters and pundits keep working, often failing upwards to six-figure jobs, provided that they attend all the right parties and know all the right people.

On full display in this video.

One would think such boneheaded prognosticators might shut up for a while, but of course they don’t, since they suffer no professional penalty for stupidity.

Left Right and Centre

Well – it was either Barack or hello – Sarah fucking Palin as VP ? I don’t think so.
Barack is just cool. Who gives a shit what he did or didn’t do. As if he can change everything to his liking anyway.
The greatest power the US president has is what the White House decor should be. And even then I’ll bet there’s ‘guidelines’ that ‘will not be fucked with’.

Elected two terms is not bad. If he really sucked – how did he get re-elected, hmmm ?